Posted on 01/16/2011 4:09:10 PM PST by balch3
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) -- A Southern Baptist seminary president and evolution opponent has turned sights on "theistic evolution," the idea that evolutionary forces are somehow guided by God. Albert Mohler
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote an article in the Winter 2011 issue of the seminary magazine labeling attempts by Christians to accommodate Darwinism "a biblical and theological disaster."
Mohler said being able to find middle ground between a young-earth creationism that believes God created the world in six 24-hour days and naturalism that regards evolution the product of random chance "would resolve a great cultural and intellectual conflict."
The problem, however, is that it is not evolutionary theory that gives way, but rather the Bible and Christian theology.
Mohler said acceptance of evolutionary theory requires reading the first two chapters of Genesis as a literary rendering and not historical fact, but it doesn't end there. It also requires rethinking the claim that sin and death entered the human race through the Fall of Adam. That in turn, Mohler contended, raises questions about New Testament passages like First Corinthians 15:22, "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive."
"The New Testament clearly establishes the Gospel of Jesus Christ upon the foundation of the Bible's account of creation," Mohler wrote. "If there was no historical Adam and no historical Fall, the Gospel is no longer understood in biblical terms."
Mohler said that after trying to reconcile their reading of Genesis with science, proponents of theistic evolution are now publicly rejecting biblical inerrancy, the doctrine that the Bible is totally free from error.
"We now face the undeniable truth that the most basic and fundamental questions of biblical authority and Gospel integrity are at stake," Mohler concluded. "Are you ready for this debate?"
In a separate article in the same issue, Gregory Wills, professor of church history at Southern Seminary, said attempts to affirm both creation and evolution in the 19th and 20th century produced Christian liberalism, which attracted large numbers of Americans, including the clerical and academic leadership of most denominations.
After establishing the concept that Genesis is true from a religious but not a historical standpoint, Wills said, liberalism went on to apply naturalistic criteria to accounts of miracles and prophecy as well. The result, he says, was a Bible "with little functional authority."
"Liberalism in America began with the rejection of the Bible's creation account," Wills wrote. "It culminated with a broad rejection of the beliefs of historic Christianity. Yet many Christians today wish to repeat the experiment. We should not expect different results."
Mohler, who in the last year became involved in public debate about evolution with the BioLogos Foundation, a conservative evangelical group that promotes integrating faith and science, has long maintained the most natural reading of the Bible is that God created the world in six 24-hour days just a few thousand years ago.
Writing in Time magazine in 2005, Mohler rejected the idea of human "descent."
"Evangelicals must absolutely affirm the special creation of humans in God's image, with no physical evolution from any nonhuman species," he wrote. "Just as important, the Bible clearly teaches that God is involved in every aspect and moment in the life of His creation and the universe. That rules out the image of a kind of divine watchmaker."
That sounds as if creation occurred passively as a result of its existence and not of its will. But since it exists eternally it would make sense the creation does also.
They are real, physical entities. How do you know what is "spirit" or what is "divine"?
Or we describe our experience, learn from others, discuss with each other
How do you know when I say "love" you and I think of the same thing?
Thanks.
Bingo!
The burden of providing proof and reason for belief in the supernatural is indeed heavy. Pretending to know is a false comfort that robs them of the dignity of knowing the actual truth. Their entire life is wasted in chasing lies.
That's their business and choosing. I hate to be in a position where something is obviously ridiculous but have to pretend that it must be true because some men said God spoke through them. It's quite pathetic when you think about it, to voluntarily put yourself in such a predicament. I often wonder how much fear plays a role in that submission.
If fear wasn’t intended to play a role, then what’s the point in burning forever in a lake of fire? This is the main driver.
Indeed. I just don't think I could love someone I feared, someone who demanded that I love him or else...there is a strange masochistic undertone in loving someone you fear.
How do you know when I say "love" you and I think of the same thing?
The perception of time is a subjective experience that vary all the time. :) As far as relativistic time dilation: the objective measurement of time is different depending on your time frame (Lorentz transformation).
How did Einstein define the speed of light?
Are you thinking of "speed limit"?
When I conceive in this area, things like will and want don't fit; maybe it's just me.
But since it exists eternally it would make sense the creation does also.
I can see that conclusion. I can also not see it. Conceptualizing the boundary between eternal and temporal is a pretty dicey deal IMHO.
Thanks for your post.
It would help to see what specifically your referring to in Summa.
Aquinas is using Aristotle terms for "causes" so it helps to understand efficient causes for example.
Anyway, the argument is there are first, intermediate and final causes. The "sense world" is comprised of intermediate and final causes - there must be a first cause. Nothing can be the cause of itself. The first cause cannot be a dependent cause (caused by something else). Therefore there must exist a first cause that is neither caused by itself nor caused by anything outside itself; ergo uncaused.
I don't believe there is an error in the logic of his argument, but would need to see more precisely where you are seeing one.
What is the creator doing if its not creating?
I think I'd approach it this way: First, we have the first cause, unchanging and eternal requirements. So creation, no creation (assuming this exists) would be in the area of "effect" rather than cause. The first cause is unchanging, creation/no creation is a result of its existence - on nothingness perhaps.
The second approach would be to say the first cause is never not causing, not creating. What comes into existence as a result of its cause is subject to time and change, existence, non-existence.
That's the way I'd approach it for now. I think it easily conforms to your cycling universe view.
Not in the first cause argument, which is one of five including first mover. There's a whole section in Summa on "Whether God is eternal" in the form of objections and answers. I won't paste the whole thing here, but here's a part that refers to the first mover part of the cosmological argument of which the first cause argument is also a part.
The idea of eternity follows immutability, as the idea of time follows movement, as appears from the preceding article. Hence, as God is supremely immutable, it supremely belongs to Him to be eternal.
I should have noted that “move” for Aquinas is used the same as we use “change.” So in essence - in this part of “Whether God is eternal” - he is saying there is no time if there is no change.
You are however, if you are to promote a dispute, obliged to insist that those “fairy tales” are central to Biblical Instruction and that Biblical Instruction is no different than a lab report.
The burden of proof mechanism (be it scientific, philosophic, or otherwise) does not kick in until common assumptions are established. I’m not buying into your insistence that “fairy tales” are central to Biblical Instruction and must be accepted as a common assumption.
“who's the editor?”
YHWH
“Mind-reading and hoping the Religion Moderator doesn't catch it? :)”
That “clunk” we heard was the hint you dropped hoping the RM would catch it (speaking of desperation). Derrida deconstruction is a methodology of analysis and disputation. Your accusation of “mind reading” is itself an instance of mind reading.
>Do you need to know the word for chocolate to taste it? The word for sun to be warmed by it?
>>>They are real, physical entities.
That’s not the point of the objection, response or analogy.
>>>Unless you know what the essence is (which requires cognitive function) you can’t recognize the form.
“Knowing” is not always a cognitive function, nor a knowing of forms or abstractions or concepts. To limit knowing to these is well, limiting your knowledge.
Certainly these are necessary for certain discussions and operations. But we can know a great deal without these - and many forms or concepts are even based upon the experience, sense or otherwise.
“There is absolute truth but it’s not accessible to human minds because we don’t know everything there is to know.”
Is this statement true in an absolute sense? If not, then under what circumstances is it true and under what circumstances false? (Prove my tagline wrong, I dare you.)
“Instead of wasting your keystrokes on empty personal labels, why don’t you just tell me what is spiritual and what God is?”
These things have been explained to you many times by other posters who know a lot more than I know.
“Why should I take your word or the words of other ordinary human beings?”
Remember, we’re not debating the credibility of individuals. Rather, the disagreement is over the validity of particular ideas. This is extremely important to understand, for anyone participating in political discourse, anywhere. It seems we’ve identified another source of your confusion.
I know you’re not a leftist, but this is another fundamental principle of leftist ideology you’ve adopted: that people and personalities are what really we need to depend on—instead of ideas.
“No, not hypothesis. It is theory supported by a great deal of evidence.”
Guessing and hoping is not evidence.
“Reason is sufficient, because there is more than sufficient evidence for the law.”
But the law you’re using—“energy can neither be created nor destroyed and never could, infinitely into the past”—doesn’t exist.
“I do my own physics.”
That’s good. You seem like a highly knowledgeable individual—doing your own physics is good. But your mistake is to think you can do your own laws of physics.
“I understand it just fine. In order for your assertion to mean any more than nothing, you must show that energy can be created, or destroyed.”
There’s no getting around this fact:
The law of conservation of energy is not self-evident.
"There’s no getting around this fact: The law of conservation of energy is not self-evident.
You're headed for an F- in science class. Produce the evidence for your assertion that for a quantity of energy represented by A; A=0, then at some arbitrary coordinate it becomes A≠0.
My statement is one of logic, and only indirectly of science.
A science professor can’t give an F for science in a philosophy course he doesn’t understand.
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